UBER’s new offices: where Tech meets Details douche

by sanjosebarstool

SFGate – Uber’s new headquarters looks a little like the man cave of a tasteful bachelor: tufted black leather sofas, dark wood, metal, poured concrete and a few nice house plants for good measure. It is, in other words, what you might expect from a company that’s goal is to make the average person feel like “a frickin’ pimp,” as CEO Travis Kalanick once put it.

The ride-service giant left its Financial District space last month to move to 1455 Market St., the burgeoning tech corridor of Mid-Market. It’s now the second tech tenant in the building – the payments and commerce startup Square has several floors. Twitter and One Kings Lane share a building down the block, near Zendesk and Yammer. San Francisco stalwart Dolby will soon move employees from its three South of Market buildings to one at Ninth and Market streets.

Uber’s new 88,000-square-foot space has enough room for about 600 employees – with a lease on an additional 132,000-square-foot space ready to go. The company, reportedly valued at $10 billion, is planning to grow like crazy. (Uber’s move was not tied to any tax incentive, such as the ones Twitter and several other Mid-Market companies received.)

A quarter-mile track that snakes around the office – “the path” – is intended for “walk and talks.”

Most walls serve as whiteboards. Employees have added personal flourishes – doodles on the walls, a neon New Belgium Brewing Ranger IPA sign, a replica of a dinosaur skull.

At first look some of these new digs might look straight up incredible, tons of couches, huge TV’s, a bar, ping pong tables, such as you can see here:

But what these new age digital tech places are, are really cults compounds. If you can brainwash an employee to spend more hours a day, weekend at their office than in their own place, surroundings eventually you’re gonna get them to do more than the average 9 to 5 employee at no extra pay. Sure, having a Starbucks in your building or a beer fridge/ping pong table at your office is nice, but the moment you start seeing a quarter mile long track around your office, I don’t care how cool your office looks, that’s a cult, bro. Can’t even go outside for a walk. I know some start ups are ordering lunch in every day which sounds great until you realize you basically have to work through lunch. Hell, Facebook’s created their own little town where you can get everything for free just so they can house people almost the entire day from they wake up till the time they go to bed.

That’s coal mine status, bro. Granted, if you dig your company and what you do, this is all fine, but every person eventually gets jaded with parts or people at their job and if that’s the case, it seems like at the very least there would be tons of hiding places.